An ancient artifact suspected to be a type of boat-shaped coffin popular two millennia ago in China has been unearthed in southwestern Sichuan Province, authorities said Sunday.

If confirmed, the boat coffin, found at the construction site of a reservoir in Pengxi County, could be the biggest ever discovered in Chinese history.

The suspected coffin measures about 24 meters long, up to 70 cm wide and is more than 1 meter tall. It is made of a type of precious wood called Nanmu, and although its ends do not curl up in the traditional manner, it otherwise looks like the funerary boxes that were popular in Sichuan, Chongqing, and surrounding areas before the Western Han Dynasty (202 B.C. to 8 A.D.).

Local archaeologists said that the item could have been made before the Western Han Dynasty and is of high research value.

"It looks a bit different from other boat coffins found in the past," according to an expert with the Sichuan Provincial Cultural and Archaeology Research Institute. "But it is highly possible that it is a boat coffin."
The boat will be further analyzed in a lab, according to the institute.